Psycho

Phoenix office worker Marion Crane is fed up with the way life has treated her. She has to meet her lover Sam in lunch breaks and they cannot get married because Sam has to give most of his money away in alimony. One Friday Marion is trusted to bank $40,000 by her employer. Seeing the opportunity to take the money and start a new life, Marion leaves town and heads towards Sam's California store. Tired after the long drive and caught in a storm, she gets off the main highway and pulls into The Bates Motel. The motel is managed by a quiet young man called Norman who seems to be dominated by his mother.

Psycho was filmed in 1960 and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The screenplay was written by Joseph Stefano form the book by Robert Bloch. The stars were Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh and Vera Miles. 

Thrillers are categorised by their fast paced frequent action which is evident in Psycho with the shower scene being the most prominent but also the car and staircase adding to action. 

The shower scene is most famous action sequence in the film. 

Another trait of thrillers is the resourceful hero who overcomes the more powerful villain. This is true of Psycho but not in the conventional way, the heroic characters of Sam and Lila track Marion and Det. Arbogast to the motel. They also thwart Bates' insane plans of murder and put him behind bars. However the villain does not seem much better equipped apart from  the knife against Marion. 

Psycho uses an ingenious storyline to fool the audience because of the way in which it is brought together. The storyline shocks the audience throughout with the big shocks coming from the shower murder and the revelation about Mother but there are minor shocks such as the Det. being murdered. The shock murder of Marion would trick most audiences as we come to believe her to be the main character of the film and begin to identify with her before her abrupt exit. Viewers seeing this film for the first time would experience the full force of Hitchcock and all his devices. 

However the main character is revealed this time to be Norman Bates as the point of view shifts to him, because of this crucial plot element Hitchcock did not allow any advanced screenings and no one was allowed late admittance to the film. 

The suspense is built up very well in this film due to the score that Hitchcock uses. Whenever there is going to be violence or a murder the music comes in and highlights us to this fact such as the shower scene with the piercing sounds as the knife stabs Marion and then the low beats as she dies. The suspense is very good as we are longing to find out about the house and mother and it keeps us guessing right until the end, where no one would have guessed that it would be Norman dressed as his mother. 

Villain driven plots are a big part of thrillers and this is present in Psycho because the only reason Marion doesn't achieve her goal is because of Bates so this causes the Det. to come looking for her and in turn Lila and Sam. 

This was Hitchcock's break through in America because of the profound impact it had on their psyche. It was a box office smash and had people queuing up to get in but the popularity has not dropped over the last 5 decades as there have been 3 sequels plus a remake in 1998. The remake however could not encapsulate the audience as the original because the story was already known and not a shock to anyone. The uniqueness of the original could not be recreated, no matter how many times the plot could be re-done or the music re-used. Hitchcock's finished article could not be redone as he had created perfection. 

The shower scene has gained much fame as it is the first image that springs to mind when Psycho is mentioned, it is so famous that people who have not seen the film have seen the scene or heard of it. The thing that makes this scene is the music by Bernard Herrmann, the strident, discordant music has been re-used countless times to denote the appearance of a "psycho". 

However this scene it not all that it seems, to the audience we see a woman getting horrifically stabbed multiple times until she bleeds to death but the way the scene is edited shows how our minds work. All we see during this scene is a knife, blood (chocolate syrup), water and a strategically covered up woman's body, we hardly ever see the actually penetration of the knife it is only hinted at. The viewers imagination fills in the blanks which is presumably why modern viewers fins Psycho to be "tame" because it is not full of blood and gore during the scene. Due to this scene there was an understandable shower phobia because of the vulnerability shown during shower, this made people adopt a preference from baths as they were more safe. The most famous victim of this phobia was Janet Leigh herself claiming she never took a shower again after the film.